Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Space Station, Part II

Part II of my series on cover art depicting space stations (Part I). Here are vast assortment of primarily Alex Schomburg and Vincent Di Fate’s artwork — they did love their space stations. But, I think my favorite is by far Arthur Hawkins’ cover for the 1959 edition of Curt Siodmak’s Skyport (1959) — the author is of course famous for the novel Donovan’s Brain (1942). The delightful color scheme, the 50s aesthetic, the vague indication of continents below, the cluster of stars…. Wonderful!

I’ve decided to include a few German and Italian editions of Arthur C. Clarke and Lan Wright… Karel Thole, a Dutch illustrator, has long been my favorite of the foreign science fiction artists. I might do a post on his English edition covers (mostly in the 70s) — there are a handful and some are quite stunning.

As for the books (and magazine volumes) below, I’ve read Clarke’s Islands in the Sky (1952) and Space Cadet (1948) — both were fun juveniles — but that’s about it… Are their any gems?

Enjoy!

(Alex Schomburg’s cover for the November 1961 issue of Amazing Stories)

That Asimov title (“Nice Guys Finish First”) threw me as I couldn’t think of a story meeting the description. But it appears to be one of his monthly science essays, on society, which … doesn’t actually pin it down for me, but I haven’t read most of his essay collections in a long while.

Unisave looks interesting to me, but I have a weird fondness for overpopulated or city-universe dystopias from that era and the cover really screams late 70s in a delightful way.